Lord Durham should have gone on to give Mr. Smillie
a little elementary information as to the principles of ownership as regards all property. He should have said : Ownership in law is a difficult thing to define exactly, but, speaking generally, a man is the owner of whatever the law allows him to sell to another. The rights of property are in effect those rights which the law allows a man to exercise and for the exercise of which it gives full protection. But again and again the State has increasedand emphasized the landowner's power of sale. Its whole policy hitherto has been to free the land and untie the landowner's hands. The techni- calities that Mr. Smillie quoted out of Blackstone and the text- books are merely a mediaeval theory invented in order to cover the Royal pretensions to tax and exact military service from the landowners. The feudal theory that you did not own land but merely held it for and from the King was especially emphasized by William the Conqueror and his successors. But of course there was plenty of land-owning in England long before this piece of feudal theorizing was invented. Happily the English Kings were never able to carry their theory to the point of confiscation, and therefore holding from the King came to be the equivalent of Resolute possession.
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